Some people dream of retiring early, while others love their job and could keep working for their whole lives. For people born after 1959, the normal retirement age is 67, but that doesn’t stop many Americans from dreaming of retiring early. You can begin receiving Social Security benefits as early as 62, or as late as 70. There are many benefits to waiting until you are older to retire because it gives you more time to save money and pay off debt before your income is reduced. What you hear about less often is the fact that there are plenty of good reasons to retire early as well. Here are five reasons you may be able to retire early.
1. You have the money
This is the most obvious reason to retire early. If you have enough money to retire now and you hate your job, or simply want more free time, then you should go ahead and do it. The traditional rule of thumb is that you will need roughly 80 percent of your pre-retirement income for retirement, but you don’t need that. What you need is 300x your monthly expense and use the 4% withdrawal rate. You can invest in dividend paying stock at regularly shoot out an average of 4% and you’ll never have to touch the principle at all, or even on the bad years, just adjust your spending.
So a trip to Puerto Rico of $3500 will set me back 3 months late to retiring. Instead, you should take road trip or hiking trip for cheaper cost of travel and still have fun. Or if you can keep living like a college student and not inflate your lifestyle can speed you up to earlier retirement.
2. You have good health insurance you can afford
Lacking quality and affordable coverage is one of the most common reasons people don’t retire early. So a couple ways that you can do this. A. If you’re married and your spouse has family health insurance (or can get it), then you can consider retiring early if your spouse plans to keep working. B. If you do not have access to healthcare through a spouse, you could apply for ObamaCare. The Affordable Act has made insurance more affordable and allows and encourage entrepreneurship.
3. You’re debt-free
We all would love to be debt-free – mostly we talk about mortgage, student loans, and consumer debts. If you are currently debt-free, you may be able to retire early. You will be in a particularly good spot if your mortgage is paid off. Since a huge portion of your income is freed up when you are debt-free, this will affect your retirement budget positively because you will need less money each month for set bills.
4. You don’t have any dependents
If you still have young children or even grandchildren who you are supporting, it can be difficult to retire early. But if you can factor them in on the monthly expense, and have a nice size 525 college saving set up. You are ready to chill.
5. You have another source of income
Having multiple source of income would give you so much flexibility – dividends, rental property, Peer to Peer lending, business income, and maybe even blogging (Although most bloggers probably doesn’t even break even on their blogs, I wouldn’t count on it). Take a little part-time job doing your hobby – selling arts and craft.
If five reasons wasn’t good enough to convince you, there are 10 other reasons to retire early:
Reason number 10.
I want to spend more time with my family. Especially some one with an elderly parent, sick spouse, small children. All the precious moment can be missed with a blink of an eye.
Reason number 9.
I want to spend more time huntin’ and fishin’. Just to chill out is a great choice to have. I talked to a good friend today, she’s sick. She told she can’t be stressed out, it can cause a flare up of her disease. Not having to get up early scrub all that snow, dig yourself out of the drive way. Then, explain to your boss why you come to work late, or project wasn’t done in time is not good for your physical and mental health.
Reason number 8.
I want to lower my golf handicap. I actually love golfing, with the new biking and hiking movement, people are less likely to take up golf, so it’s become cheaper than ever.
Reason number 7.
Work interferes with what I really want to do with my life. Think about there is 24 hours a day, and you’ve already spent 10-12 hours traveling and working. The rest you need to sleep and take care of yourself, you are left with 1-4 hours at most to things that you like. If you can gain that 10 hours back, wouldn’t you like it!
Reason number 6.
I’m not interested in working nights and weekends. No really, I don’t. Night time is for sleeping. I hate having to stay up, force your eyes to open, when your brain has totally shut down. Then you have to gopple all the coffee so you can stay up. After the caffeine take place, you can’t sleep because you are wound up. It’s a cascade to a disaster.
Reason number 5.
Once I’m retired, every day will feel like Saturday.
(Of course, we hope this doesn’t apply to those currently working nights and weekends.)
Reason number 4.
In this company, looking busy means more than being productive.
(Especially, looking busy on nights and weekends.)
Reason number 3.
It’s the ultimate in employee empowerment.
Reason number 2.
Instead of contributing to my 401k, I should be shorting company stock.
Good article. Its amazing to see the different reasons that motivate people to retire early.
+ When one is younger, there is time+health, but no money.
+ When one is older and retired, there is time+money, but no health, depending on how hard you had to work for the money.
+ Early retirement is trying to hit the best of all three: have time+money+health.
So, whoever reaches early retirement, they can truly experience the world in many many different ways: both mentally and physically.
Best of luck for your FI journey!!
Thank for the kind wish! Just to have the option of retiring early would empower anybody. They work more freely. Allow people to create rather than doing something to please somebody else. Morel would increase tremendously.
I would love to retire early, but it doesn’t look possible right now, for years to come. That’s why I’m trying to at least transition to a career that I like enough to work into for a few more decades. I’m exploring options and trying to reinvent myself. If I were able to retire in a few years and still live a lifestyle where I can travel the world, I would do it an eye blink.
All great reasons to retire early, I am thinking of writing a blog post about just this topic. One really strong reason for me is that, the time that we have alive is limited, while the time we waste working for money and doing another gazillion things that is not bringing us extra happiness we will never get back; regardless of how much money we have, we can never buy what precious time we lost! So definitely make it count.